Scam artists auctioning “Genuwyne Madoff art work” slapped upside the head by Blumenthal. “I checked with my neighbor and good friend Walt,” Blumenthal told FWIW’s Scusie, “and he admitted to me that none of this crap ever hung on his pal Bernie’s walls. So he promised to stop doing it.”

Phew! Another bunch of suckers saved from disappointment.

“It’s a scam within a scam,” said Philip Eliasoph, professor of art history at Fairfield University, who complained to Blumenthal’s office Thursday about the scheduled auctions. Eliasoph, who teaches about museums, auctions and the art market, said it’s a classic bait-and-switch tactic.

“The whole pretense is, it’s coming out of Uncle Bernie’s Montauk mansion,” said Eliasoph, a member of the state Commission on Culture and Tourism.

“People are so stupid,” he said. “This one in particular is egregious because they’re playing on the whole pretense of the Madoff fraud. It’s a fraud encrypted in a fraud. Most of what is being auctioned, if you showed up with it at the door of Christie’s or one of the other major auction houses, you wouldn’t even get in to see one of the specialists in modern or contemporary art.”